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[Cyber Von Cyberus]

@Scorpixel  Roaming [Redacted] in hyperspace isn't a vanilla feature, it's added by mods and it honestly hyperspace feels a bit empty despite all of the storms. I also wish there were a few more things there.

[Serenitis]

Hyperspace being "empty" is not really a problem. It just highlights the scale of things.

As far as games go, the closest I've seen to doing long distance travel in a way that is somewhat similar to Starsector, but isn't very obviously trying to throw things in the player's way deliberately, is Star Control 2.
Pick a destination, and go. No tedious micromanagement required (most of the time). And the only occaision you need to do anything more involved is when you want to avoid another game entity.

Translating that to Starsector (None of this is a suggestion or request)

Spoiler

How I would do hyperspace is to make 'deep' hyperspace have varying degrees of opaqueness to sensors (blinding), but otherwise have no further negative effects. Storms would be entirely cosmetic, they're only there for atmosphere.
(You could have them capable of being triggered by fleet movement if you want to give the player clues...)
And travel speed would be much higher. Not nescessarily higher as in faster physical speed, but more like compressed time so the player isn't waiting around so much but it still takes the same amount of game time to get places.

The player can then just go somewhere with no hassle, but the limited visibility creates places where other fleets can lurk, which in turn creates a choice - avoid the fluffy bits because you don't know what's in there, or just go through.
This choice in itself changes priority as the player progresses.
Early game it might not be worth taking the risk, but you don't yet have all that high maint. costs, so going round isn't going to cost you much. But it's safer.
Late game you might not care what is hiding there, and you might also be quite fed up of having to constantly baby your fleet around "stuff" when you just want to get to that place and do the thing. Just let me get there and play the game!

[close]

[AgentFransis]

isn't very obviously trying to throw things in the player's way deliberately, is Star Control 2.

*we come in peace*
MUST BREAK TARGET INTO COMPONENT MATERIALS

[bobucles]

Does the game lore allow for permanent emplacements in hyperspace? When a fleet runs out of fuel it drifts into the nearest gravity well, but warning beacons have no problem drifting around. So a hyperspace starbase may or may not be possible.

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

storms are a great part of the game, accounting for them makes it more dangerous early on, and later on you don't care about the supplies.

what I would like is for the expeditions to be affected by the storm. they should be delayed or come with less CR, like a player would if they rushed through the storms.

[AgentFransis]

Some fun. Stare at the screen and occasionally click to correct course. Or plough through and get blown a couple map grids off course. It'd be much better if hyperspace was empty and travel time was several times faster in real time (or at least configurable). Even if speed was unchanged I would at least prefer to travel in peace so I can think about stuff instead of doing annoying busywork.

Alternatively go full 40K and fill hyperspace with demons and unspeakable horrors. Would couple as a great lore explanation for endless pirate fleets - they're all chaos worshippers and have heavy industry in the warp.

[nindger]

I know it's been a while since this thread was last active, so it's kind of a necro. But this topic right here is literally what I made the forum account for. Hyperspace storms are, in my opinion, not fun the way they are currently implemented.
Hyperspace travel consists of dragging your mouse cursor across the screen. It's not terribly interesting.
The only thing hyperspace storms add to that is that the game sometimes randomly says "Hey, I just decided I'm going to take some of your money away, and maybe also strand you in the middle of nowhere to be sucked into a black hole." That's if you go through clouds in the first place, of course. But what is the alternative? Taking an insanely circuitous route and prolonging a part of the game that is, as we have established, just dragging your mouse cursor across the screen. There is no thinking or planning or challenge involved in any of this.

I see several things that could be implemented which would keep some semblance of "terrain" in deep space, because having a completely flat map without additional features wouldn't be a great solution either.

1) This is mandatory in my opinion: have the sector map show the actual, correct locations of cloud formations, so that if you don't want or currently can't afford the CR hit, you can plan your route to avoid clouds (and therefore storms) entirely before you are right in front of them. The current implementation is unimmersive on top of everything else, because the cloud formations are static - mapping them out seems like an incredibly obvious thing to do in-universe.
1.1) Waypoints. A large chunk of game time consists of navigating hyperspace, how is there no navigational waypoint system on the sector map? I. e. go to system X along set waypoints a, b, c and d. Combined with 1), this would allow players to properly plan their routes across the sector. Of course, you can still decide that it's better for you to take the direct route, environmental hazards be damned.
2) Instead of activating in short, semi-random intervals, have hyperspace storms activate as a cascading wave across a cloud formation. I. e. there is a small random chance for any eligible terrain tile (the denser, brighter cloud sections) to trigger a hyperspace storm. When it does trigger, it then causes a cascading chain reaction in adjacent eligible terrain. The "thinner", darker cloud sections don't transmit the storm's energy as well, they don't spawn storms themselves and a storm wave will slowly ebb down when traveling across these tiles.
This would make storms far more predictable since most times, you won't be on or very near the tile that starts the storm "wave". There still is a certain chance that a storm will trigger right on top of you, but it's small. Instead, most of the time, you will see a storm wave heading towards you. Then you can decide whether you're in a position to break through, at a decent cost of supply, fuel and CR. It's not just the Warp randomly farting a free engine boost at you, it's erratic energy spikes interfering with your drive bubble and overloading systems across the ship. But if you're short on time, it might still be worth it to brace for impact and go right through. Or maybe you reckon it will die down enough before you reach it.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

[Grievous69]

1) This is mandatory in my opinion: have the sector map actually show cloud formations

You can view this by pressing ''1'' I think, or maybe ''2'' on the map, whichever one is called Starscape. And I completely agree with waypoints.

[nindger]

1) This is mandatory in my opinion: have the sector map actually show cloud formations

You can view this by pressing ''1'' I think, or maybe ''2'' on the map, whichever one is called Starscape. And I completely agree with waypoints.

Thank you, edited my previous post to better state what I meant: the current representation on the map doesn't really correspond to the actual cloud formations. It seems to partly show the background space as well. It looks like there are clouds where there are none, then a bit later it doesn't show clouds where there are dense clouds with storms in them.

[Rune Wolf]

have the sector map show the actual, correct locations of cloud formations,

^
THIS

I'm mapping, BY-HAND, Hyperspace terrain, giving it names like "The Expanse", "The Northeast Passage", "The Corridor", "The Keyhole". It never changes. Deep Hyperspace is a static terrain feature. Even the relative amount of "energy" (how stormy it is) remains the same in each section - some are quiet Deep Hyperspace, others are rolling thunder.

Even the Radar pretends to - but does not - show Deep Hyperspace boundaries properly.

[tomatopaste]

I thought I would add my two cents.
Firstly, I agree that hyperspace storms as they are are annoying and unfun to play with. Yes, they can boost speed, but they are unreliable and cause too much CR loss to be especially useful. I think that a good way to change them without implementing the more complex ideas suggested here is to reduce or remove the mechanic that changes your direction on contact with the cloud, possibly as a skill. The speedboost would be way more welcome if it didn't mean possibly sending your fleet flying on a detour, wasting fuel and supplies, where often multiple storms chain together to send the player in a completely different direction to their target destination.

[Arcagnello]

As a showcase to how much I believe hyperspace storms are important to the gameplay, I litterally never bothered to even avoid them after the first hours of traversing between star systems.

It's negative effects end up being the better option when compared to going the long way around then after fleet-wide skills, despite sometimes screwing with navigation. The lease devs could do to at least try Maki g their a midwife feasible would be to:

1)massively improve upon the hyperspace map to have a fog of war in unexplored hyperspace sections, but actually show the exact layout of the clouds once they are explored

2)introduce a waypoint system to plan routes around the clouds and to make even in-system travel able to avoid things you do not want your fleet to enter contact with.

Every other feature to further enrich the "hyperspace travel experience" can be discussed after the above points are implemented as they are the foundation for a much more varied, therefore enjoyable experience.

Also, may the storm-jumping pirate armadas run out of fuel and drift into a black hole.